


Sleep

by Morvidra



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Babies, Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Gen, Motherhood, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-25 02:07:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6176107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morvidra/pseuds/Morvidra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one."<br/>--Leo J. Burke</p><p>Magrat wants to sleep. Baby Esme doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cptsdcarlosdevil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsdcarlosdevil/gifts).



Princess Esmeralda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre was awake and kicking.

Looking at the infant, Queen Magrat was trying hard to summon feelings of tenderness. A deeply-held faith in books was supporting Magrat through the early days of motherhood, and she’d read that mothers were supposed to spend hours hovering over cradles, watching their baby’s every move. Therefore she was watching. Seated in an armchair next to the crib. Trying not to yawn.

Deep down within herself, Magrat knew she wasn’t good with children. Frankly, she didn’t like them much. She wanted to… but she wasn’t, and she didn’t. Various people had told her it would be different with her own children.

It was hard to say whether it was or not. She loved baby Esme with a fierceness that skipped right past her romantic exterior and went right to the steel core. Esme was beautiful and clever and altogether precious, and anyone coming near her was going to get the ancient axe of Queen Ynci through their neck as a warning shot.1 But – and she was embarrassed to admit this even in the privacy of her own head – there were times when Magrat just plain didn’t like her daughter.

Actually, Magrat was pretty sure she would like baby Esme just fine, if only she would, just occasionally, settle down and go to sleep for a long and uninterrupted stretch of time.  
Four hours, even.

It was difficult enough to get a break. Baby Esme, strong-minded even at the age of two weeks, preferred Magrat to be nearby. The screaming that resulted whenever she felt abandoned by a mother who was trying to take a bath or do other such unnecessary tasks had led to the current situation of Magrat taking the baby with her. Everywhere.

A fortnight after the birth, Magrat was short of sleep to the point of hallucinations.2 And it was all very well to say that one was a queen, and one could therefore get assistance in the form of a day-nurse3, a night-nurse4, a wet-nurse5 and probably a royal potty-bearer6. The problem – aside from Lancre’s small size leading to a distinct shortage of castle staff – was that Magrat didn’t want to outsource motherhood. She wanted to be here, with her baby.

She also wanted to sleep.

Verence had formed the theory that their daughter simply required the right kind of toy to sleep with, and she would be bound to settle happily. The pile in the corner was now threatening to flood the nursery with a tidal wave of rattles and ducks, but on this particular night, Magrat had reached the point where logic had taken a flying leap out of the window, been caught in an updraft, and crashed heavily into the Ramtops. One of these toys was bound to work. It was just a matter of finding which one.

Magrat removed the unsuccessful rubber duck, dropping it on the growing pile to her right. She selected another toy from the pile on her left – a stuffed cat, this time – and placed it carefully in the crib.

The process was repeated. Again. And again.

...

[](http://s1016.photobucket.com/user/Morvidra/media/princess%20crib.jpg.html)

Crib as purchased by King Verence II of Lancre for his Heir the little Princess  
...

Magrat woke with a start. The room was suddenly lighter than it had been… surely only a moment ago? Magrat had a long moment of being unutterably disoriented, until she remembered that people did, just occasionally, sleep at night-time. At which point she bolted upright to check that the occupant of the crib was still breathing.

Baby Esme was breathing peacefully. She was also asleep. And clutching…

Oh.

Well.

Magrat’s gestational reading had included the fact that many women felt the urge to take up some form of craft when they were pregnant. Magrat really hadn’t seen the point, but she had dutifully made the attempt.

She hadn’t taken to it well. Verence had failed to guess the intended use of any of the knitted articles she had produced. An excursion into scrapbooking had left one entire wing of the castle covered in glue and small pieces of paper. Her attempt at making a teddy bear had produced a sort of furry blob. And the baby blanket she had quilted was doing micromail7 service as a kitchen potholder, Magrat having got bored after six inches.

However, while her sewing skills might have been, objectively, terrible, they had produced one unexpected result. Baby Esme was fast asleep, having latched onto the poor excuse for a teddy bear with the zeal of a miner striking a vein of treacle.

Magrat thought that Verence would probably be unhappy that the baby hadn’t chosen one of the more expensive and – in his view – suitable toys for a royal baby.

She looked at the sleeping child and decided firmly that he could jolly well put up with it. Besides, as a royal baby, Esme undoubtedly had impeccable taste, and would likely set a trend in sponge-shaped teddy bears.  
And Magrat might just be able to catch a bit more sleep before the next feed was due.

1\. Queen Ynci had been a warrior queen of Lancre in the ancient past of the kingdom, known for beheading enemies. There was a widely-held belief that Ynci had never existed, but somehow no-one had got around to mentioning this to Magrat. Well… not while she was holding the axe, anyway.↩  
2\. She could have sworn some of the guests at Esme’s christening had been vampires.↩  
3\. Shawn Ogg.↩  
4\. Shawn Ogg.↩  
5\. Not Shawn Ogg.↩  
6\. Shawn Ogg again.↩  
7\. On another world, the analogy might have been ‘sterling’.↩


End file.
